Change Your Brain Every Day - Spring Into Better Mental Health Today

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

Spring is in the air, and with it comes the urge to clean and reorganize our environments for the coming year. But it’s not just your bedroom or your closet that benefits from a spring cleaning. Cleaning your mind can be one of the most beneficial ways to set yourself up for success and happiness for the rest of the year. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you practical tips to give your brain a proper spring cleaning. 

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Hey, everybody. We are so excited to be with you. And this week, we're going to talk about spring cleaning for your mind. And take out the trash. Take out the trash. And you know, the number one strategy to take out the trash and you know the number one strategy to take out the trash is sleep because when you sleep your brain cleans or washes itself it actually opens up new it's called a glymphatic system, a fluid system that goes to work, washing your brain. It also helps to integrate memories

and what happened during the day. And yet we have time change, which robs us of- Oh my goodness. I'm still adjusting. It's like mass jet lag for no good reason. Right. It's sort of like the appendix it's a remnant it's left over from something in the past it had some function that it doesn't but before we get to spring cleaning your mind you You want to read angel duck, Joe? Yes. Uh, let's see here. I am so thankful. I found this podcast. I really wish I had the

ability to go to one of the clinics. I've suffered so much with mental illness, quote unquote, for as long as I can remember medication after medication, after medication, provider, after provider, suicidal ide ideation different diagnoses i feel like i have no emotion being on medication i look forward to listening to the entire series and reading your books and hopefully finding a way out and finding me not sure if i will if it will be possible to come off these medications or if i can find a good psychiatrist in my area but now i have hope that is so sad that's by angel.joe so angel.joe be a winner of either my book uh your brain is always listening or tana's the relentless courage of a scared child you just have to write us let us know which one you want. We'll sign them and send them off to you.

So spring cleaning for your mind. So where do you think thoughts come from? Well, I think some of them are kind of random. They're spontaneous based on your surroundings. And we just allow them to sort of take over. Well, I was thinking about that today where thoughts come from and and then i thought about our three girls and i'm sure they're written in your genetic code from the traumas and experiences of your ancestors. We've talked about the ancestral dragon.

So I was thinking Brianne, our oldest daughter, when she was little, she was hiding behind my leg whenever somebody would new come around. So she had fearful thoughts without anything really to be afraid of. There were not significant traumatic experiences and then her sister caitlin as soon as somebody would come by she'd wave and say hi my name is caitlin and she's still kind of that way and ch Chloe came out. I'm the leader.

I'm the boss. Like everything. And she's still that way. And that 12 word sentences when she was two. Right. Right. And it's, it's interesting.

So thoughts come from your genes. Are you saying she got that from me? I'm the leader on the bosses, pretty close. But thoughts also come from how healthy your brain is. Yeah. Because when you don't sleep, you're more likely to have an ant infestation. Oh, there's no question. Like I woke up at 4.30 this morning for no good reason.

And my brain started to spin on all the things. That just happens. And I had to keep. So what I do when that happens, I had to keep reminding myself. Broom. Start sweeping away. Then another one would come in. Broom.

Sweep it away. Another one would come in. But it happens though. They start to. to think of spring cleaning taking out the trash sleep it away broom sweep it away that's a really great strategy comes from the music and the lyrics you listen to. It comes from your mother's voice, from your father's voice. Even if they're dead, you still have their voice in your head approving of you or disapproving of you it comes from the mean girls that you experienced in high school and that i experienced because i have five sisters it comes from um just teachers and coaches and and so what's really important to understand is you are not

your thoughts. You are not your mind that you don't have to own them. And I tell this to my patients over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer. We did this great evaluation of Jessamay Peluso in the clinic yesterday. She's a comedian and I'd done her podcast and we'd, great, I'd evaluate her and we'd film it so it's going to be public and just like you in the middle of the night her mom died in

November and it's it's like the demon thoughts attack we change those into hands and I gave her a little anteater just to remind her not to believe every stupid thing she thinks and the thought was basically what I think so many people worry about it's no one will love me yeah

and so one way you claim these your mind is you write down your negative thoughts. And your brain is always listening. There's an exercise on write down a hundred of your worst thoughts and then challenge them in the way that we teach you with five questions from Byron Katie's work. It's just so powerful. Right. I think that's been one of the most helpful things for me

in overcoming my past. It's challenging my thoughts. Yeah. And then you will spring clean your mind. It will smell right. It will look right. It will give you energy. And, you know, I know during the pandemic, a lot of people, because they just had more time at home, clean. Didn't we do that for every cabinet? And then we did it again. And then again. So when I talk about spring cleaning for your mind, what other things come to mind for you? So I like the challenging your thoughts. I like for me, you know, using the broom analogy and just sort of sweeping. I think being present.

So we get so busy and we don't pay attention and being present and paying attention, I think also to how we interact with others. So noticing how we interact with others. I think being aware of intention is really important because sometimes people don't say what they mean. There's something else behind what's going on with them so i think we react so maybe not reacting and paying attention what's the intention going on um is important so i think this is a really important thing if you've got kids you know what i'm talking about your kids don't always say what they mean they're they they use code all the time um but they want a reaction from you they want they want to know you know, am I loved? Am I this? Am I that? Whatever. But they don't say it that way. And they can be pretty triggering.

So stepping back and not reacting, but paying attention to their intentions is important. Because it's hard. It's triggering. You know, we talked about if your mind is messy, that journaling the thoughts, challenging the thoughts is so important. But part of it comes from a brain that's struggling. Coming up soon, I'm going to tell you about a happiness study that we did at Amen Clinics. It's a big deal.

We have scanned 500 people and we have their Oxford happiness questionnaire. And if your brain's not healthy, you're not healthy. So part of when we come back, part of spring cleaning your mind is also spring cleaning your cabinets in the kitchen. And I think what I was trying to say, which is really important right now, especially people, all you gotta do is turn on the news, which don't do that, but you know what I'm talking about.

Or look at social media and you see everyone reacting to everyone. And I think what I'm trying to get out with that is, you know, when people say something to you or about you, it's rarely about you. It's about them. It's about what's going on with them. So that's what I'm trying to get at is step back and realize that a lot of what's going on around you or what you're hearing is not about you. It's about what's going on with another person. If you can step back and be present and ask yourself, oh, I wonder why that person is saying that. I wonder why these people are saying that. It will change how you react. So what did you learn during this podcast? Write it down. Post it on any of your social media sites. Hasht hashtag Brain Warriors Way podcast.

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